Study Of Legal Issues On "Secondary Meaning" Trademark

With the rapid development of social economy, the competition between enterprises is more and more fierce. Trademark as a sign of commodity or service’s features, has become a wizard of the consumer and the best salesman of the operator. The field of trademarks is a hotly contested spot of the competition in business.The fundamental reason why the trademark is protected by law is that the trademark has the identity operator providing commodities or services, and to distinguish the different role of operators to provide goods or services, and this effect is the distinctiveness of trademark. Significant is not only the soul of the trademark, but also the core of the trademark law, it can be divided into inherent distinctiveness and obtain significant. For ordinary trademark, its significance is the presence of natural; But for the "secondary meaning" trademark, its significance in general need long-term use can be obtained, by what criteria to identify a trademark has been "secondary meaning" is always a difficult problem in theory and practice.This paper first through discusses the legislative purpose of trademark law and significant core position in trademark law, clarify the significance of the protection of the "secondary meaning" trademark; Then borrow foreign comparison and theoretical analysis, identified the "secondary meaning" trademark should be applied to the descriptive trademark, and shall not be applicable to generic names and trademarks of geographical names, and expounds four standard to judge the descriptive trademark:"the dictionary meaning standard", "imagination standard", "competitors need standard" and "similar products use standard"; For decision of "secondary meaning" trademark, we can learn from the experience of judicial practice USA criteria, will be divided into direct and indirect evidence. That trademark cognitive state of consumer is direct evidence, and also the most important evidence, the operator on the use of a trademark, the length of time the geographical scope, how much is the indirect evidence, can only be used as indirect reflect consumer perceptions of the evidence.In addition, the development of the times also adds the connotation of "secondary meaning" The "secondary meaning" theory which originated in the Trademark Law is also play a positive role in the company logo protection, which provides a new idea for their name, trade name protection enterprise, also more rich "second meaning" theory; For the foreign language descriptive vocabulary to apply for registration, whether Chinese translation review departments shall focus on the review of the vocabulary of descriptive or generic names, and use criteria of "second meaning" trademark to decide whether it can be registered, must not be confused by the surface of the foreign language vocabulary, and let the market have more foreign language descriptive mark which don’t have the "secondary meaning ".